He must be as Miss Dell wished him to be. Gone were the amusing compliments he was so skilled at and in were the dusty papers of the Royal Society that he was most certainlynotskilled at.
Chapter Eight
In the carriageon their way home, Frederick had been complaining for some minutes.
“I swear my arm is bruised!” he said. “The lady wielded her fan like any knight of old at a joust. Jost says I am doomed, because Miss Blaise pronounces me very bad.”
Lady Penderton looked indulgently at her son. “Miss Blaise does not mean to injure you, my son. She is only nervous and fan whipping is the result of that energy she does not know what to do with. One of these days, Miss Blaise will hit a fellow and he will see the charm of it, and the charm of her generous dowry, and that will be that.”
Frederick, ignoring his mother’s sympathy, said, “And Grayson! What does he mean by throwing me at the lady’s feet like meat to a lion? It was bad form.”
“It was excessively amusing,” Lady Penderton said. “If you would stop a moment to think, you might look forward in anticipation to the moment when you might repay the lord for his kindness. I am sure some opportunity might present itself.”
“Yes,” Frederick said, rubbing his hands together, “perhaps I will. Perhaps Grayson will some night find himself stumbling through a dance with Miss Blessy. I have stepped in to rescue the lady enough times lest she sit out, I can attest to her diabolical ability to go the wrong way.”
While Kitty heard the conversation, she did not pay much attention to it. The night had been too filled with other diversions.
Lord Grayson joined in on the hunt for Veritas!
It was extraordinary. She would not have guessed in a thousand years that he would show the slightest interest in such a venture. In truth, she would have thought he’d deride the very idea of it. She’d even had the notion he would have laughed at it. She had been wrong!
They’d had a lively conversation at supper. Kitty did not yet have any theories of who the troublemaker was but had been in the process of taking copious notes. She planned on cross-referencing every claim she read, to see if it could be supported in some way by prior writings. If it was not built upon prior discoveries, then it would go on her list of suspicious items warranting further investigation.
Lord Grayson had posited that they might want to look more closely at Lord Everard Home, on the theory that nobody rational sat around thinking about houseflies on walls. For that matter, Lord Home seemed to write an excessive amount of papers on bizarre subjectsandhe was only recently titled. Who really knew where the man had sprung from?
Kitty was able to put his mind at ease regarding Lord Home. It was true he seemed a quixotic individual, but he was also a recipient of the Copley Medal, the highest honor given by the society.
Though Lord Grayson had seemed incredulous over the idea, he had put aside his suspicions of that particular gentleman.
They had agreed to keep one another informed of any discoveries.
After they had exhausted all ideas relating to Veritas, they spoke of the more usual things. Kitty talked of Penny and her happiness with Lord Cabot. Though, she had been shocked when Lord Grayson had countered by inquiring if it were true that Penny had ridden the lord’s horse at Newmarket.
She had been shocked, and not entirely sure she could be certain it wasnottrue. It would be just like Penny to dare such a thing. Still, she denied it vehemently.
To change the subject, Kitty had inquired into Lord Grayson’s family. In retrospect, she wished she had not. Of course, he did not mention the dukes’ pact, though he could not have helped but think of it. As for the state of his mother and father, he did not go into any detail, but she was not led to believe it was a happy union.
But then, his musings had led him to talk of Shakespeare. Just as when he’d spoken of poetry from the island of Lamu, he seemed to have a depth of knowledge of the subject. Kitty had, of course, read all of the great bard’s plays, but long ago in the schoolroom.
In retrospect, she found herself silly for attempting to cover her lack of understanding of the subject by proclaiming that uncovering Veritas must take precedence over plays and poetry.
Lord Grayson had looked amused and said:And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
She had been completely lost and he had laughed and said, “It is fromAs you like it. What I mean to say is, if you must put the mystery above all else, it must be as you like it.”
It had been the first time that it had been thelordwho had run intellectual rings roundher. She could not decide if she admired it or was irritated by it.
Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the evening was Lord Grayson himself. Stripped of his usual florid compliments, he began to seem a real person.
She knew very well that his claim that he had sent the book as a jest was not true. He’d only sought to recover his pride. She could not condemn him for that. After all, how many times had Frederick pretended to know something he most certainly did not? Frederick would die a thousand deaths before owning an error of understanding. It was a strange aspect of the male psyche, but evident all the same. And for all that, she must admit, she had done just the same in attempting to veer the conversation away from Shakespeare, it being a subject she was not so well-versed in.
So, while Lord Grayson certainly did not know anything of Aristotle’s theories or recent advancements in that arena, was it not admirable that he sought to defend the society’s honor?
“Kitty, dear,” the baroness said, “you seemed very engaged at supper.”
“She could not possibly have been, mama,” Frederick said. “She was stuck talking to Grayson. Though, I hardly had time to observe anybody else as I was too busy ducking Miss Blaise’s weapon of choice.”
“Iwasengaged, as it happens,” Kitty said. “Much to my surprise, Lord Grayson has taken up the search for Veritas and is reading all the papers to discover the culprit.”
